James Cridland’s Future of Radio: Zero-rated data, will analytics stifle the creative process, and a UK radio station being hijacked

James Cridland is Managing Director of media.info, and an Australia-based radio futurologist. He is a consultant, writer and public speaker who concentrates on the effect that new platforms and technology are having on the radio business. Find out more or subscribe at http://james.cridland.net

James Cridland’s articles

United States

Astonishing how US TV networks manage to fix the (electronic) ratings. In this example, TV networks deliberately misspell the name of episodes they know will do badly (the nightly news on a public holiday, for example) so that these shows don’t harm the show averages. It’s another reminder that electronic ratings systems aren’t infallible.

US radio content regulation is among the loosest in the world – but it’s astonishing that it can lead to this kind of unpleasant stuff. Responsible radio companies might say “nothing to do with us”, and that might be the case, but it harms all of radio’s image with the public and advertisers. Also see Lazy Buggles Headlines.

Gabriel Parker has 24.9m plays on Spotify. But: he doesn’t exist. Is Spotify full of fake artists?, asks Music Business Worldwide. This website is biased against Spotify, I should mention, and just like Amazon flogs its own-brand HDMI cables, so there’s theoretically nothing wrong with Spotify own-brand music, but still a fascinating read.

United Kingdom

Radio pirate hijacks airwaves to blast out obscene track – “and there’s nothing local stations can do about it”. Not in this article, but from what I understand it’s either someone overpowering the station’s link from studio to transmitter, or it’s someone overpowering the RF link between the outside broadcast van and the studio. Either way, it’s a good reminder to check how secure these are.